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The Ballpark Stadium of the Future
thejrwr writes to mention a CNN article about the ballpark stadium of the future. The new Cisco stadium for the Oakland A's will be a paragon of the company's technologies, with cellphones carrying personal data used for advertising and identification purposes. "Cisco, which makes the routers, switches and other devices used to link networks and direct traffic on the Internet, is trying to shed its image as solely a maker of networking infrastructure gear. The company also hopes to capitalize on products and services that utilize the network. One example is TelePresence, a technology similar to video conferencing that Cisco introduced last month that aims to deliver a three-dimensional feeling that the participants are all in the same room."
Look, I have nothing against sports, or sports fans. If they want to go cheer whomever they want, that is fine. Just pay for the building yourself, don't use my tax dollars. Case in point - my hometown Seattle. Apparently nobody liked it because it wasn't new enough or old enough. (the problem with the ceiling tiles was fixable for less than a half billion dollars) So, they tore down the Kingdome to make room for two half-billion dollar buildings. (I heard that there was still three years left on the bonds for the Kingdome - the county hadn't finished paying the mortgage!)
One of those buildings is perhaps used 14 days out of the year. In it, the second richest man in the world pays 50 odd men multiple million dollars a year a piece to play a child's game. As a tax payer and potential fan, I have to pay a lot of money to see the inside of a resource that I pay for.
I don't buy the "increased tax revenue" bit- people would spend their money in other ways. It isn't like I can tell my friends, "hey let's go down to the stadium and play football on the grass". This is a pure taxpayer takeaway, and it sickens me how city after city falls for it. If they want to conduct a business, they should have to pay for the facility just like any other business.
I haven't watched baseball in a while(I'm from Pittsburgh, so maybe that explains why :P) but on a recent trip to Japan I was in Hiroshima and heard that you just HAVE to see a Hiroshima Carp game. So I plunked down the 2000 yen to get a pretty good seat on a bench(there are security guards there whose job it is to find people seats) and was amazed at just how much fun baseball really could be. From the cheers to the fast pace of the game(9 innings only took 2 hours and some change IIRC) it was an environment I had never seen in the US. It was organized chaos.
Granted, the players in the US are probably better than the Japanese players, but damn the Japanese games are much more fun to watch.
Monstar L
Ad technology that is.
/.er's who aren't baseball fans thats the equvilent of paying someone to boost your XBox Live score. If you want to get on the Jumboscreen you bring kids, a funny sign, paint your face, and just be a good fan. Paying does occur already for marriage proposels, but special occasions are different than some rich drunk slob who's just going to kiss a clients ass.
I agree although it probly won't be as obvious to an average person as it is to us that loath advertisments.
People really still drag themselves to a stadium through all that traffic when HDTV exists?
You can easily make it to Wrigly Field by way of "The L." Location is everything in bussiness.
From the article:and pay to show them on the Jumbotron.
For the
I want to be retired when I grow up.
So, lets get this straight. The local government pays for team stadia in the US? That's insane. In the UK not only is it private money, often the teams will have to bribe the local council with roads, housing etc. to be allowed to build in the first place.
Sounds like someone is missing a trick
It seems like the SSDD. Targeted advertising? Come on, this has been a pipe dream for years. Targeted advertising is about as useful as it is desirable -- which is to say, not very. Sure, it works for Google... because people are actively seeking something. Nobody goes to the ballpark to find out about a new car.
Tickets on a cellphone? This is obviously change for change's sake. Two peices of paper are just fine as it. You can put them in your shirt pocket, give one to a friend, or sell them when you can't make a game. Why in the hell would I want to tie that to my cellphone? Even if it worked exactly as intended, it would be less functional than the existing solution. There's a reason e-books haven't caught on.
Paying to show your face on the big screen? This has got to be the worst idea ever. Any and all excitement related to seeing yourself on the large display is directly related to the serendipity of the event (aside from those morons who propose at baseball games). People who don't want to pay will resent it, it will be abused by morons, and it's not like it couldn't be done just fine with existing technology. Call or log in up to a week in advance, give your seat number and CC#, and congratulations! You're on TV.
Watching instant replays? Everybody who wants this feature carries a small TV. If you're going to go digital with this, how about streaming the entire game in HD to the internet at large. I bet far more people would be interested in that than there are people who want to watch laptops in the stadium.
In short, adding a few new features that nobody wants and changing a perfectly working process would make this the Windows Vista of stadiums.
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